Alva Review-Courier -

DENVER (AP) — He didn't mean for it to happen this way. He simply wanted to be alone.

"If I had any social skills at all I wouldn't be here," says the reclusive 67-year-old Billy Barr, who has spent the last 46 years in a remote cabin in the snowy woods several miles above Crested Butte. "I'm from inner-city Trenton, New Jersey, which is pretty funny when you consider the contrast."

Barr began taking notes in 1974 out of boredom. Every day he would record the low and high temperatures, and measure new snow, snow-water equivalent and snowpack depth. Now he has stacks of yellowed notebooks brimm...